Contents

• Introduction
• Chronology
• Historical overview
• Literary Overview
• Sample Reading : Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway
• Reference

Chapter 6 also includes detailed readings of the following literary texts:

• H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay
• D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
• T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Suggested essay questions

• To what extent is it justifiable to consider this period as a self-contained period? From your studies, what are the historical and literary factors that might be seen to unify it and give it a discrete identity? On the other hand, are there any factors which cause you to question the period's unity, or continuity, and which might suggest different ways of mapping it out?
• What are the key similarities and differences between the literature of this period and that of the periods immediately preceding and following it?
• This period has been described as an 'Age of Interrogation'. Judging by the texts you are currently studying, what do you think were the most pressing questions being asked by contemporary writers?
• What evidence do you find in the literature of this period of a growing democratisation of society?
• Compare and contrast the different sorts of developments seen during this period in the three major literary genres of fiction, poetry and drama.
• To what extent (and in what ways) does the literature you are currently studying reflect on any of the major technological changes which occurred in this period?
• What do you understand by the literary terms 'realism' and 'modernism' and do you find the distinction helpful in your study of the literature of this period?
• In what ways do you think literary representations of women changed in this period as a result of the campaign for women's suffrage and related political and social developments in the struggle for equal rights for women?
• How do the texts you are studying reflect contemporary political and social developments in their treatment of social class?
• Assess the relative significance of war to the development of literature in this period.